Since I also have accumulated many many tabs since the last time I posted, here are some medical/science-y related things that I found interesting (this was originally going to be part of the previous post, but I realized I have too many things to share, and the post was getting too long, haha). In no particular order:

3-D floating, holographic bodies have now been developed at the University of Michigan to help with anatomy/dissection! I’ve actually seen some of the virtual anatomy lab tables they mention in the article at some of the AAMC conferences before and thought they were really neat (just too expensive for our school probably), but this takes that a step even further! It would be even cooler if they could add tactile information (like perhaps a pressure glove that can help simulate what things should feel like)

Here’s a really neat article on using Disney to reach an autistic child – which I love both because it’s a very moving story, and because it’s another reason to love Disney 🙂 It show how important it is in medicine/healthcare to think outside the box – how thinking creatively to a problem can help connect people in totally unexpected ways. Which actually also reminds me of this moving story of Carly.

Here’s a few articles relating to music:
1) Ever get a song stuck in your head? That’s called an “earworm” – great name huh? You can thank the Germans for that. This article briefly outlines what types of songs/conditions get songs like “Let it Go” stuck in our heads.
2) Here are some random facts about listening to music and how it can affect your life. These are all presumably based on research (I have to admit I did not go and check all the links for the studies behind these, but at least they have them so you can look them up yourselves if you want to verify the information presented).
3) If you loved The Sound of Music as much as I did growing up, and ever wondered what the real von Trapp family was like (yes, they were real people!), here is a comparison of the movie with the true history/personality of the von Trapps.

Here’s a few articles relating to nutrition sciences:
1) Visceral fat (known as the “bad” fat around your organs, which if accumulated may be detrimental to your health) has been linked to cells expressing the Wt1 gene, which may continue to act as a source of this fat in adults, modifiable through diet. These cells are also the ones that may develop into the protective lining (mesothelium) around these visceral fat areas. Pretty interesting!
2) A pretty good article that discusses the use of antibiotics potentially contributing to the obesity epidemic, and also touches upon one of the mechanisms behind it through modification of the gut microbiome. Something to think about I think, for the future – truly, physicians need to be good stewards of antibiotics and not just give them out to anyone who has the sniffles or asks for them (not only for this reason, but because of the increasing cases of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria that are now cropping up due to overuse of these meds).
3) Apparently, there are two forms of the major milk protein casein that can be dominant in milk – A1 and A2. According to this article, milk with predominantly A1 protein has been linked to a variety of diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes, and even autism or schizophrenia, while A2 is more digestable by humans. However, as the article says, “the evidence is far from conclusive”, so take it with a grain of salt (especially given some of the comments below). I do think t’s an interesting concept though, and one that might merit investigation.

And finally, people are starting to believe the Black Death in Europe in the Late Middle Ages was actually a pneumonic plague (spread from human to human through the air), rather than bubonic (disease form that causes infection through the lymphatic system in humans, spread by rat fleas). Makes sense to me – I always thought it seemed to spread way too quickly for fleas to be the culprit.

That’s it for now, but there’s a whole other window with even more (older) tabs that I have yet to get to… hopefully that happens soon…

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edit: Well, it looks like I was wrong, and I only have a couple more links (most of the other tabs were funding sources that I was looking into for a potential overseas research thing I was looking into, hah. So just ended up bookmarking most of those). So here are the other links:

Speaking of areas in the body, here’s an um… enlightening article on what the female pleasure areas look like when they wake up, so to speak. Kind of interesting, and also makes sense. Share it with your SO’s, folks.

And finally, just because it’s too good not to share (and since it’s exactly what I’m doing right now, it seems to fit well), here is a non-scientific, but still interesting and very amusingly accurate picture of why people procrastinate. And also an equally hilarious and illustrated follow-up to the article, including a few words of advice on how to beat the habit.